The Purchase of Fripp Island SC

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This Article was written By Page Miller

The Purchase of Fripp Island SC

John Lee

In reminiscing about the purchase, Hardin noted that in 1972 almost all of the holdings of South Carolina S&Ls were in residential mortgages, which were limited by state usury laws to a maximum interest rate of 8%. With national to rates well exceeding this level, these institutions needed to explore ways to diversify their investment portfolios. Toward the end of the 1960s, the regulations of the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Board included a new provision allowing these lending institutions to form coalitions to buy and developed commercial properties. South Carolina Oceanfront Homes for sale

Bill Bowen, who in 1970 and purchase one of the first Capt. John Fripp villas, also facilitated the purchase. As the executive director of the South Carolina savings and loan league, he had been instrumental in establishing the service Corporation of South Carolina, with assets of $1.3 billion, and positioning the 45 participating S&L members to take advantage of new investment opportunities. Early in 1972 Hardin and Lawrence proposed the purchase of Fripp at a meeting in Columbia of the service Corporation of South Carolina. The consensus among the savings and loan lenders was that Fripp Island was a beautiful island with great potential and that since the current owner of financial difficulties, the island could probably be purchase at an advantageous price.

Although neither Hardin nor Lawrence at any resort management experience, they knew that if they were to invest in Fripp island resort, they want to own all the various interests of the island: the bridge, the inn, the resort facilities, the golf course interests, including his home and the Fripp plantation on St. Helena, where work on a graph course had begun but had never been finished. South Carolina Oceanfront Homes for sale